Shlomo Avineri, Professor of Political Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, served as Director-General of Israel’s foreign ministry under Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. His most recent book is Theodor Herzl and the Foundation of the Jewish State.

Mr. Avineri, we don't live in "an ideal world."
No doubt you share Prime Minister Netanyahu's view that this interim agreement between Iran and the P5+1 was a "historic mistake", like the 1938 Munich Agreement.
You mention that it worries Iran's regional neighbours that it "has secured some international legitimation as a nuclear-threshold power." Indeed, Iran's foes - Israel and Saudi Arabia - are bearing a grudge against Washington. Yet other Gulf States hope the deal could contribute towards ensuring nuclear non-proliferation, which would in turn safeguard peace and stability in the region.
Fortunately we live in a world of political realism. It is the instinct for survival that has urged the Iranian leadership to warm its ties with the West. It is the war-weariness in America that has discouraged President Obama from taking military actions. It is the aspiration among peoples in Iran and across the globe for peace and international security, that has forced leaders to seek peaceful negotiations instead of starting a new Cold War.
You assert that Obama's "rudderless US foreign policy" in the Middle East gives rise to Moscow's expansionistic foreign politics conducted by a "neo-authoritarian Russia" under Putin. Indeed, Russia sees the volatile Caucasus as its backyard. Easing tension in the region serves one of its national interests: security.
That China and Russia - Washington's two old rivals - have played a role in hammering the interim deal with Iran, is an undeniable truth that the US alone can no longer tackle major international problems. The world population surges. With economic growth China is becoming a global player. Others might follow suit. Bearing this in mind, Obama is in fact a pragmatist. He has adopted that "leading from behind" approach and let other countries share the burden of dealing with pressing issues, that affect us all.

"A rudderless US foreign policy is no response to a resurgent and neo-authoritarian Russia flexing its geopolitical muscle."-that just an incontrovertible credo of a hawkish troublemaker; and of which history holds quite an abundance. According to historical annals, the world order cant be permanent, and it cant be cemented in a perennial sociopolitical ground. Changes are on its way! Its hardly possible anymore for Western Hegemony to countervail an embryonic world construct, though it can strive so, but with enormous risk to get into even more serious economic complexities than prevail now.

it's been a stunning development, a terrible swing of fortunes, beyond anyone's fears (or expectations), the image of our global superpower, the US, in the last 15 years.
I once heard a dear teacher of mine referring, to Osama bin Laden, as 'diabolical' . But ... who else could drive a the most magnificent power ever ... into such a rabid self-destructing spree, or how else to call it? And now, 12 years later, comes mere Snowden .. which calls our attention also, by the immense discrediting power exerted by a man acting also single-handed, and redefining the direction of a manifest destiny .. really, what sense is in this?
Well, of course Putin's doing his share, but with much lesser merit, as, is he not, "the most powerful" man on earth ?

the article begins by lauding the Iran nuclear deal then throws some premonitory aspersions on the final agreement.the ubiquitous 1933 Munich agreement is drawn as a magic wand and template to turn the whole episode into oblivion .but it was years since the birth pangs of a new Mideast was uttered .but the article slyly moans the passing of this old order.the proximate midwives of this parturition were the neocons -bush premptive doctrinaires.the post-American world and the rise of the rest demand a new geopolitical configuration.one oddity noticed in the analysis is the absence of the recent furtive nibblingS by china in south china sea.the ADIZ was announced immediately after the Geneva deal .the common sense reading of the geopolitical Rorschach blot is as the onset of Iranian,Russian and Chinese hegemony in their proximate neighborhood.i conjure it is better to be adept in delivering these new babies with new security layers in their respective blocks.

I think looking at this from systemic point of view there are no "losers or gainers".
We evolved into a global human system where individuals and nations have become mutually interconnected and interdependent.
We still do not fully comprehend how different this system is to what we are used to.
We still try to see the world as a fragmented, polarized system with East and West, North and South, left and right, one "ism" against the other, enemies and allies and so on.
In a global, integral system such notions simply do not exist, "global leaders" and "global policemen" do not exist either.
What we are watching is a great equalization process, there might be temporary ups and downs but at the end we will settle into a mutually complementing equal system, cogwheels connecting and working together.
And not on ethical, moral or "spiritual" grounds but out of necessity.
This is what our evolutionary conditions demand from us, and if we do not adapt willingly, pro-actively, then we will have to do it the hard way, through blows and suffering.

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